Sunday, July 17, 2016

Will the Ems flourish?

You should be interested in this question because some of
your descendants might become Ems during the next century or so. Ems are the human-like robots that will be
created by emulation of human brains. The emulation process will involve scanning an individual’s
brain to record its particular cell features and connections and then building
a computer model that processes signals according to those same features and
connections. Ems will think, feel and behave like the humans from whom they are
created. They will assume they have consciousness and free will, just as humans
do.

That view of Ems is presented by Robin Hanson in his
recently published book, The Age of Em.

The Age of Em is
not the most difficult book I have ever tried to read, but of all the books I
can claim to have actually finished reading, I have possibly had greatest difficulty finishing
this one. It wasn’t the technical material in the book that put me off. Robin
has explained enough of it well enough for non-technical readers like me to get
the gist of the scenario being portrayed. I just became bored reading about the
Ems. I persisted only because I feel that more of us (humans) should be taking
an interest in the future of human-like entities.

Others also seem to have become bored reading about the Ems.
In the Finale of his book Robin indicates that a “who cares” attitude was
common among people who read early drafts of the book, and among those who
declined to read. It would certainly have been easier for me to adopt that
attitude than to finish reading the book.

In writing about the Ems, Robin Hanson has attempted to
predict what is likely to happen, rather than to present a vision of what he
would like to happen. He suggests that the Ems will mostly live in a few tall, hot, densely packed cities, which will seem harshly functional when viewed in
physical reality, but will look spectacular and stunningly beautiful in virtual
reality. Humans will live far from the Em cities, mostly enjoying a comfortable
life on their Em-economy investments.

A distinguishing characteristic of the Em economy will be
the ability of Ems to replicate themselves at relatively low cost. Robin
suggests that there will be enough Ems willing to make copies of themselves to
greatly lower wages to a level near the full cost of computer hardware needed
to run Em brains. Under that Malthusian scenario, wages of most Ems will be so
low that they will barely be able to afford to exist, even though they will be working
hard half or more of their waking hours.

Most Ems will have office jobs, and work and play in
spectacular virtual realities. Many of them will enjoy high status during their
working lives because they will have mental capacities many times those of
human brains. They will be slowed down after retirement, but will have the
opportunity to live for as long as Em civilization persists.

Robin suggests that the Em future, as he portrays it, might
look pretty good in terms of utilitarian evaluation criteria. Even with wages close
to subsistence levels, Ems would have great opportunities for entertainment via
virtual reality, and they would live long lives. If there are many billions or
perhaps even trillions of them, as Robin suggests, utilitarian calculus would
conclude that the Age of the Ems would see a big increase in total happiness
relative to our world today.

That view seems to me to highlight the deficiencies of
crude utilitarianism. The quality of life of the typical Em, as portrayed by
Robin, strikes me as being lamentable. I predict that most humans faced with
the choice of whether to live such a life, or the life of an average human,
would choose to live the life of a human. Since Ems would inherit our values, I
predict that most of them would also reject the life offered by their hot
houses of virtual reality in favour of a more authentic life closer to nature.
The choices involved are similar to those posed by Robert Nozick in his famous
experience machine thought experiment (discussed previously on this blog in a post that has recently been re-published on Common Sense Ethics).

That brings me to what seems to me to be a major flaw in the
scenario that Robin Hanson posits. I think he misjudges human values and
preferences when he suggests that large numbers of humans and Ems would be
willing to make copies of themselves under circumstances where Em wages were low
and falling. As advances in technology have made it easier for humans to exert greater
control over their own reproduction they have used that power to ensure their
offspring have good prospects to have lives they will value. Ems might view
their replication decisions differently, but I don’t see why they would choose
to bring into the world large numbers of twins earning subsistence wages.

The other problem I have with Robin’s scenario is that I
think he may be too pessimistic about the potential for Ems to increase their
productivity by expanding their use of non-Em robots, as an alternative to
replicating themselves. As Ems obtain more advanced capital to work with
(including non-Em robots) their marginal productivity could be expected to rise,
thus tending to raise wage rates.

This book is based on the assumption that brain emulation is
likely to happen before artificial machine intelligence develops to the point where
machines will achieve broad human level abilities. I don’t have the technical
competence to comment on whether that is likely. Some issues relating to the
latter possibility were discussed in my review of Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence. The idea that human-like robots may be created through brain emulation at some time during the next century does not fill me with joy, but life might be better for humans (and Ems) if the Ems are created before the intelligent machines, so they
can prevent them from running amok.

Despite my reservations about this book, I recommend that
readers should buy it in order to give Robin Hanson appropriate encouragement for
his efforts in attempting to foresee the future of human-like creatures. An
even better reason to buy the book is to try assess for yourself whether Robin’s
base-line scenario is plausible.

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Emancipation

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There is a list of my most popular posts below. I am pleased that a post about characteristics of a good society, that I wrote in 2009, is still one of the most popular. That post captures some of the ideas about freedom and individual human flourishing that I think are most important.